Arrested rioters had guns, bombs
WASHINGTON - United by political grievances, they came in costumes, snapping selfies, calling themselves patriots. Some came armed for battle and planning for “war”.
As authorities begin to charge the rioters in the January 6 siege of the US Capitol, court documents paint a picture of a diverse mob that included both citizens with mainstream careers — police officers, a flower shop owner, a state lawmaker, military veterans, even an Olympic medallist — as well as Americans on the fringe.
One was a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group. Another had a caveman costume beneath a police bulletproof vest. One served time in prison for attempted murder.
They travelled from as far as Hawaii to join the protest of Congress certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s election win, which Republican President Donald Trump has falsely claimed resulted from widespread election fraud.
Some brought all manner of weapons or explosives, underscoring the grave threat from an insurrection that resulted in five deaths, including a police officer, and dozens of injuries.
Federal prosecutors have said they expect to bring charges against hundreds of people involving the riot and related threats and violence.
They had charged about 80 as of Thursday, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.
Their task was made much harder by that fact that overwhelmed police initially made few arrests of the hundreds of people who stormed the building — just 14 were detained that day by the US Capitol Police, which guards the building.
And yet many suspects made investigators’ and prosecutors’ jobs easy by mugging for news cameras and posting what authorities described as real-time confessions — including videos of themselves
— in postings on social media as they pushed their way inside the Capitol, home to the US Congress, according to a Reuters review of court records.
David Blair — a Trump supporter who lives in Washington’s suburbs and was charged with attacking a police officer with a stick — came to the Capitol after seeing that it had been overrun by a mob supporting the president because he wanted “to witness history,” he told Reuters in a text message.
“I ended up still finding a way to get in trouble because I had so much pent-up emotion,” he wrote.